André Ken Jakobsson
Assistant Professor
Center for War Studies, Department of Political Science, University of Southern Denmark
Denmark
ajak@sam.sdu.dk
Organizing principles of the next security order are being forged on the battlefields of Ukraine. The fundamental ordering concept in jeopardy is Westphalian state sovereignty and non-interference. It is now directly challenged by the redefined and revisionist Sino-Russian concept of ‘indivisible security’. The importance is self-evident since outright denial of the existence of a Ukrainian state was a core justification for Russia’s war. Ukraine has never had real statehood, argued Russian president Putin, but should instead be seen as an ‘inalienable part of Russia’s history, culture, and spiritual space.’ This line of imperialist thinking has long been enshrouded in Russian nomenclature through ideas of the so-called ‘near abroad’ and the colonial vision of a ‘Russian World’ extending into the Baltic rim region. All of it antithetical to territorial borders or any political and judicial demarcations separating independent states from the Russian state.
Russian imperialist visions have since the beginning of the 2022 war in Ukraine expanded to deliberations on the destruction or conquest of Baltic rim states. Russian television host and propagandist, Vladimir Solovyov, has notoriously applied Putinist thinking on Ukraine to the Baltic states, publicly interrogating the question: ‘why do we put up with their existence?’. A position that recently found public support from Russia’s closet security partner and ally as Chinese ambassador to France Lu Shaye denied official statehood to countries formerly under Soviet rule: ‘Even these ex-Soviet countries don’t have an effective status in international law because there was no international agreement to materialize their status as sovereign countries’, Lu said. A statement China only publicly walked back as political backlash intensified. It should be regarded as a geopolitical Freudian slip – and serve as an urgent warning.
The Westphalian principle of state sovereignty will be the first casualty in any geographical area that finds itself in a post-Westphalian order under Sino-Russian influence. Such revisionist imaginations of the European security architecture were laid out in the lead-up to the war when Russia demanded a return of NATO to its 1997 posture, serving two main objectives of imperialist thinking: First, acceptance of a Russian right to a sphere-of-influence buffer zone vis-à-vis Europe and second, a rejection of the sovereign political agency exercised by states voluntarily joining under NATO’s open door policy. An aggressive threat to the security of all Central and Eastern European states. And a Baltic rim state fait accompli. The Russia-China Joint Statement from February 4, 2022, served as the other leg of Russia’s means to dismantle NATO and American unipolarity. As a final Chinese approval of war, it has rightly been recognized for its aims of subverting global order. The statement ominously declared a ‘no limit’ friendship between the two autocratic powers and led EU high representative for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell, to call it a ‘revisionist manifesto’ redefining core ordering principles.
The specific threat by Sino-Russian revisionism to Baltic rim states is illuminated through Henry Kissinger’s differentiation between legitimate and illegitimate orders. Diplomacy as the adjustment of differences through negotiation is only possible in a legitimate order where rules, means and goals are accepted by all major actors. This moment has long passed. Instead, revisionist states are fundamentally challenging the Westphalian order because it is perceived as illegitimate. They are changing the rules, means and goals of foreign policy. And because of this, diplomacy in the Baltic rim region has given way for hybrid warfare and risks of war.
Sino-Russian post-Westphalian security thinking is best understood through their common redefinition of the Cold War concept ‘indivisible security’. Russia invoked it to legitimize its war on Ukraine as fighting a threat from NATO while China’s ‘Global Security Initiative’ likewise is based on this concept that ‘no state shall strengthen its own security at the expense of others’. At face value an echo of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, however, as the realities of Russia’s wars of aggression in combination with China’s extensive military buildup and threats of use of force show, indivisible security and the Global Security Initiative aim only to serve national security interests of Russia and China – at the expense of regional states.
Political support for a Sino-Russian order based on indivisible security thus poses a direct threat to Baltic rim state sovereignty. And any encroachment on Baltic rim state sovereignty carries within it an existential threat to NATO cohesion. Therefore, in addition to military support for Ukraine’s fight, the security of Baltic rim states also depends on a forceful rejection of the revisionist and imperialist concept of indivisible security and the Global Security Initiative.
Russian imperialist visions have since the beginning of the 2022 war in Ukraine expanded to deliberations on the destruction or conquest of Baltic rim states. Russian television host and propagandist, Vladimir Solovyov, has notoriously applied Putinist thinking on Ukraine to the Baltic states, publicly interrogating the question: ‘why do we put up with their existence?’. A position that recently found public support from Russia’s closet security partner and ally as Chinese ambassador to France Lu Shaye denied official statehood to countries formerly under Soviet rule: ‘Even these ex-Soviet countries don’t have an effective status in international law because there was no international agreement to materialize their status as sovereign countries’, Lu said. A statement China only publicly walked back as political backlash intensified. It should be regarded as a geopolitical Freudian slip – and serve as an urgent warning.
The Westphalian principle of state sovereignty will be the first casualty in any geographical area that finds itself in a post-Westphalian order under Sino-Russian influence. Such revisionist imaginations of the European security architecture were laid out in the lead-up to the war when Russia demanded a return of NATO to its 1997 posture, serving two main objectives of imperialist thinking: First, acceptance of a Russian right to a sphere-of-influence buffer zone vis-à-vis Europe and second, a rejection of the sovereign political agency exercised by states voluntarily joining under NATO’s open door policy. An aggressive threat to the security of all Central and Eastern European states. And a Baltic rim state fait accompli. The Russia-China Joint Statement from February 4, 2022, served as the other leg of Russia’s means to dismantle NATO and American unipolarity. As a final Chinese approval of war, it has rightly been recognized for its aims of subverting global order. The statement ominously declared a ‘no limit’ friendship between the two autocratic powers and led EU high representative for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell, to call it a ‘revisionist manifesto’ redefining core ordering principles.
The specific threat by Sino-Russian revisionism to Baltic rim states is illuminated through Henry Kissinger’s differentiation between legitimate and illegitimate orders. Diplomacy as the adjustment of differences through negotiation is only possible in a legitimate order where rules, means and goals are accepted by all major actors. This moment has long passed. Instead, revisionist states are fundamentally challenging the Westphalian order because it is perceived as illegitimate. They are changing the rules, means and goals of foreign policy. And because of this, diplomacy in the Baltic rim region has given way for hybrid warfare and risks of war.
Sino-Russian post-Westphalian security thinking is best understood through their common redefinition of the Cold War concept ‘indivisible security’. Russia invoked it to legitimize its war on Ukraine as fighting a threat from NATO while China’s ‘Global Security Initiative’ likewise is based on this concept that ‘no state shall strengthen its own security at the expense of others’. At face value an echo of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, however, as the realities of Russia’s wars of aggression in combination with China’s extensive military buildup and threats of use of force show, indivisible security and the Global Security Initiative aim only to serve national security interests of Russia and China – at the expense of regional states.
Political support for a Sino-Russian order based on indivisible security thus poses a direct threat to Baltic rim state sovereignty. And any encroachment on Baltic rim state sovereignty carries within it an existential threat to NATO cohesion. Therefore, in addition to military support for Ukraine’s fight, the security of Baltic rim states also depends on a forceful rejection of the revisionist and imperialist concept of indivisible security and the Global Security Initiative.